Thursday, May 31, 2012

What to do about Syria? Cut off Assad's Lifelines

Last week's massacre in the Syrian village of al-Houla, in which more than
100 civilians lost their lives, has called into question the conventional
wisdom in Washington that intervention would make things worse on the ground.
President Bashar al-Assad's disregard for the U.N. deadlines in early April to
withdraw forces from populated areas and implement a ceasefire has further
undermined whatever credibility anyone thought he had.

Without leadership from the United States, though, there is little hope that
the many countries with a stake in Syria's conflict will support a negotiated
solution. The only way Russia would be willing to help pressure the Assad
regime to "step aside," as the White House has demanded, would be if
Moscow assesses the regime is in terminal failure and Russia's interests in the
Middle East are at stake. U.S.-led intervention sooner, rather than later, would
help accelerate that process. The question, however, is how and when. Beyond
the existing diplomatic isolation, the sanctions regime on Syrian oil exports
and other designations of Assad regime figures and entities, a number of
measures could be undertaken in the short run to weaken Assad's grip on power.
Here they are, in order of most indirect to most direct:

1. Provide greater support to the opposition within Syria: The Obama
administration is providing non-lethal assistance to the non-violent opposition
in Syria. That assistance could be extended openly to all opposition forces as
well, including providing them with vital intelligence about regime security
and military formations headed for towns and cities. Working with these groups
would help the United States understand them better, assess their reliability,
and establish bonds of trust that could lead to provisions of lethal assistance
as the conflict unfolds.

2. Encourage the Kurds and Arab tribes in eastern Syria to fully support the
uprising: The Assad regime has broken its most reliable divisions into brigades
as it continues its deadly game of "whack-a-mole" with the Syrian
opposition. One way to further stretch Assad's forces and accelerate its demise
is to expand the Syrian uprising to eastern Syria, where Syria's Kurds and Arab
tribes hold sway. They also sit atop Syria's oil and gas producing regions.
Sabotage operations on pipelines and other facilities would severely constrain
the regime's ability to maneuver. In preliminary discussions with figures representing
these communities, they have expressed interest in expanding their relationship
with the Free Syrian Army, which has been active in eastern Syria. Now is the
time to take the next step.

3. Help Syria's neighbors create safe zones on their territory: Official
figures show Syria's border areas in Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan hold around
70,000 displaced persons, with unofficial figures undoubtedly much higher.
Washington could help all three countries create de facto safe zones that could
serve as staging areas for the training and equipping of all aspects of the
Syrian opposition, including military. This is a legitimate possibility in
Turkey and Jordan (with U.S. backing), though it is highly doubtful that it is
feasible in Lebanon given Hezbollah's influence. Sunni and Kurdish areas of
Iraq could serve as future buffer zones as well.

4. Help create buffer zones within Syria: Safe zones and staging areas in
Turkey and Jordan, once established, could be extended onto Syrian territory to
protect civilians and allow the Syrian opposition to operate freely within
Syrian territory. Turkey has already reportedly developed detailed contingency
plans to establish such a zone or zones as a way to deal with refugee flows and
to keep Kurdish militants, which the Assad regime supports, from entering
Turkey and carrying out attacks. Establishing such zones would involve a
long-term military commitment by Turkey and its allies that would only be
sustainable with U.S. assistance.

5. Establish an arms quarantine off the Syrian coast: Iran and Russia are
openly sending arms to the regime, and this needs to stop. The United States
and its allies could establish a naval quarantine along Syria's coastline
similar to the international patrols that intercept arms shipments to Lebanon
destined for Hezbollah. This, however, would seem to require a U.N. Security
Council resolution -- which Russia would likely veto. A possible way around
that could be to establish a naval and/or air quarantine of Syria with legal
support from the Arab League, akin to the legitimacy given by the Organization
of American States to a similar measure during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The
question, however, is what happens when Russia and Iran challenges it.

As Syria's conflict tragically unfolds, Washington may need to carry out
surgical airstrikes or similar measures to stop regime forces from attacking
civilians. If those strikes are to succeed in toppling the regime, however,
Washington and its allies will need to have cultivated an alternative leadership
from the fragmented Syrian opposition. Conflict will be the constant in Syria
for the foreseeable future. But conflict does not necessarily have to set off a
generalized civil war -- the opposition on the ground has come together over
one issue: Assad must go at all costs. The question is how to get there.
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Andrew J. Tabler is a senior fellow at The Washington Institute and author
of "In the Lion's Den: An Eyewitness Account of Washington's Battle with
Syria."